Strong coupling in a microcavity containing β-carotene
Abstract
We have fabricated an open-cavity microcavity structure containing a thin film of the biologically-derived molecule β-carotene. We show that the β-carotene absorption can be described in terms of a series of Lorentzian functions that approximate the 0-0, 0-1, 0-2, 0-3 and 0-4 electronic and vibronic transitions. On placing this molecular material into a microcavity, we obtain anti-crossing between the cavity mode and the 0-1 vibronic transition, however other electronic and vibronic transitions remain in the intermediate or weak-coupling regime due to their lower oscillator strength and broader linewidth. We discuss the consequences of strong-coupling for the possible modification of photosynthetic processes, or a re-ordering of allowed and optically-forbidden states.
Citation
Grant , R T , Jayaprakash , R , Coles , D M , Musser , A , Liberato , S D , Samuel , I D W , Turnbull , G A , Clark , J & Lidzey , D G 2018 , ' Strong coupling in a microcavity containing β-carotene ' , Optics Express , vol. 26 , no. 3 , pp. 3320-3327 . https://doi.org/10.1364/OE.26.003320
Publication
Optics Express
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
1094-4087Type
Journal article
Rights
Copyright 2018 Optical Society of America. Authors and readers may use, reuse, and build upon the article, or use it for text or data mining without asking prior permission from the publisher or the Author(s), as long as the purpose is non-commercial and appropriate attribution is maintained.
Description
We thank the UK EPSRC for funding a PhD scholarship for R.T.G. S.D.L gratefully acknowledges the Royal Society Research fellowship. The raw experimental data can be accessed through the online research data repository of The University of Sheffield – ORDA: https://figshare.com/s/cc4d67677f614c733e3e, https://figshare.com/s/7726f55f7dd7f73f8cee. EP/M025330/1 funding from FigshareCollections
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